Absolute Rheological Measurements of Model Suspensions: Influence and Correction of Wall Slip Prevention Measures

Since suspensions (e.g., in food, cement, or cosmetics industries) tend to show wall slip, the application of structured measuring surfaces in rheometers is widespread. Usually, for parallel-plate geometries, the tip-to-tip distance is used for calculation of absolute rheological values, which implies that there is no flow behind this distance. However, several studies show that this is not true. Therefore, the measuring gap needs to be corrected by adding the effective gap extension δ to the prescribed gap height H in order to obtain absolute rheological properties. In this paper, we determine the effective gap extension δ for different structures and fluids (Newtonian, shear thinning, and model suspensions that can be adjusted to the behavior of real fluids) and compare the corrected values to reference data. We observe that for Newtonian fluids a gap- and material-independent correction function can be derived for every measuring system, which is also applicable to suspensions, but not to shear thinning fluids. Since this relation appears to be mainly dependent on the characteristics of flow behaviour, we show that the calibration of structured measuring systems is possible with Newtonian fluids and then can be transferred to suspensions up to a certain particle content.